But it's still on the list . . .

June 2009

06/28/2009

It's not often in life that you make a decision and get to see the what-ifs in less than a year.

Last week, that's exactly what happened to me.

Some history.

In September of last year, I left, under less than positive circumstances, a 4 year career with Accenture. I had been working on a project here in Phoenix for a company called Avnet. The list of grievances on both sides was long. It was what it was. That's all I can really say.

Fortunately, I was able to land a job in short order as a contractor with Pearson. Actually, I had the job within 48 hours of finding out I was being rated the lowest Senior Systems Analyst in the West region. Because, you know, people who suck that hard, yeah, they find it hard to find a new job. It was a much better job, in a much better environment. There were issues. There always are. Nothing that I would have quit over, except that a better job offer came along at the right time. The right time being, in this case, when Pearson wanted to extend my contract, rather than hiring me full time.

The job I landed reduced my daily commute by infinity percent, since I now work at home. I see my kids all the time. I have some travel, but it's not constant. My co-workers are all on East Coast time, so my work hours are basically 6 AM to 2 PM. It's great. I couldn't ask for a better job or better career prospects, especially at a time like this.

But there's always that nagging doubt, isn't there? What if I had stuck it out with Accenture, worked out my problems, completely knuckled under to Avnet's absurd demands, like the rest of the team was doing, and tried to continue on with Accenture as I had done for the prior 4 years? What if I had taken Pearson's offer to remain on as a contractor, and maybe, eventually, get hired full time?

Two things happened last week to confirm that I made the right choice.

First, I got a call from a fellow Pearson contractor. All contractors are out by the end of the summer. Do I know of anything? Nope. Sorry to hear that all contractors are out the door in less than 6 months from when I left (and, by the way, I had only been offered a 3 month contract, thus meaning my ass would have been out the door as well). Let me ask my old friends at Avnet . . .

Got on IM, connected to my old account, saw three or four people from the Accenture team at Avnet. Odd. Didn't expect to see them all at once like that, since Avnet is a little draconian on the IM front. From three of them, I got the story: Avnet fired Accenture the week before. Everyone was told to transition in a week, and be gone before the end of the month. Now, with Accenture, one can get a new contract. Eventually. But with my record? Because of that contract? Not likely. And local? No way. The one person I know who was local on that contract, well, she's screwed. There's nothing in town. She's looking at travel at basically 100%. Sorry to hear that (well, not really; from the day I left, I knew Accenture was going to get the can - Accenture sucked on that project, and no one wanted to listen to me when I said it was the management just plain not doing their jobs).

So, here I am. I dodged two bullets this year.

I.

Am.

Neo.

Update: make that 2 and a half, maybe 3, bullets. Friend of mine, also at Avnet for Accenture, a real lynchpin of the development team (seriously, half of the major features were coded by him alone), got a bad review for his work at the project. I suspect it was the same issues I had, and I say that because, well, he had the same issues I had while I was there, I was just sort of a lightning rod. Anyway, noticed his LinkedIn profile didn't say Accenture any more. Yup, laid off. Bad karma from the Avnet project is what did it, along with time not doing anything profitable because there were no other roles he could take (or would be taken on, again, bad reviews can do that to you - even if they are mostly undeserved). So, yeah, I doubt Accenture would have kept me around.